MAKE US A EUCHARISTIC PEOPLE…

This title, a song often sung at Life-Teen celebrations of Eucharist, touches an important point for us: according to Pope Benedict (in his Apostolic Exhortation Sacramentum Caritatis), Eucharist is a mystery to be believed, celebrated and lived. So what we proclaim and how we celebrate, central as these are, won’t do unless there is a correlation, and a conversion, in our lives as a result.

A story is told about Mother Teresa—that a priest celebrating Eucharist in India noticed she was coming to receive Holy Communion, and his thought was, “Wow! Wait until I tell the others back home that I gave Holy Communion to Mother Teresa!” But when she came up, hers was a gaze riveted toward the Host with total devotion and love. And this made the priest both ashamed and edified: what do I see, or believe, he asked himself; how do I act, when approaching my Lord in the sacramental form of the Eucharist? And I (and we) must ask the same questions. How do we show reverence for the Body?

This was the source of the strength that Mother Teresa depended upon when ministering to the poorest of the poor—the outcast, the marginalized (as we regularly pray for them at Sunday Mass). She was convinced that the same Jesus in the Sacrament was present in the poor, and she “worshiped” in both forms by her service: she was the exemplar of being a member of a “Eucharistic people.”

We are called to see our Lord in the poor, including and perhaps these days especially in the “stranger and alien” (Exodus 22:21-27). We can debate (but I will not, here) the rightness or wrongness of issues like “documented” or “undocumented” immigrants, and why immigration quotas are held low, and so forth. I only observe that many Mexicans have died struggling across the desert of northern Mexico and southern Arizona and New Mexico: why were they so willing to take that kind of chance (rather like the Haitian boat-people)? And if we are indeed a Eucharistic people, how should we regard such poor ones? The one thing we cannot do, as Christians, is refer to such people as “them,” as though to turn them into objects instead of brothers and sisters.

On our retreat we were told of the actor Bruce Marchiano, playing the role of Jesus in a movie version of the Bible. He wanted to “get into character,” and he prayed to see the crowds (the “extras”) in a scene the way Jesus would: “…[I saw] a sea of people living lives in ways He didn’t plan. …For the first time in my life, I understood what the word ‘compassion’ means when it comes to Jesus Christ. …it’s a heartbreak so intense, so deep, it’s like your gut is getting ripped open.”

This is the understanding of others that Mother Teresa shared; it’s a vision of others that Eucharist can produce in us when we are open to the touch of grace; it is what Pope Benedict meant when he called us to live the Eucharist, as well as believe and celebrate it. The Lord wants us to be ‘compassionate,’ truly to ‘feel with’ the sorrows of others, even as He felt for them, and suffered with them.

Surely the most poignant of all the words in our Mass are, Do this in memory of Me. “Please,” He was saying, “remember Me. And see Me, find Me: my Body in the Sacrament; and in the members of My Body, your brothers and sisters. Honor Me with your heart, with your mind, and with your hands: come to Me with faith; go out to Me in others, in active love. Please, remember Me by showing reverence to My Body.”

This is what it means to become a Eucharistic people.